the situation:
When we first met with this Attorney, he was frustrated with the dismal results that he experienced with other marketing agencies. He’d spent thousands of dollars on lack-luster ad campaigns, a website that was ranking poorly, and no appreciable increase in new clients.
His specialty is personal injury, which is the most competitive practice area within the legal niche. To further compound the complexity, his office is located in a metropolitan area that is saturated with other law firms nearby.
In September 2016, Google released the Possum update and many local businesses found their online presence had vanished literally overnight, as was the case for this attorney. His law firm had been geo-filtered out of search results, in favor of displaying his biggest competitor, who was located in the same office building.
When other marketing agencies failed to get his law firm unfiltered, he turned to us for help. And we knew that we could help him, because we crush the map pack for clients all day long.
the solution:
As Google My Business experts, we immediately knew the cause of the problem and what needed to be done to get the client’s phone ringing again with new leads.
We got right to work on the website and GMB profile, modifying both to comply with the latest algorithm changes for local search. We continued to build topical and geographical relevance, both on and off the website. We scraped the entire web for all mentions of the law firm in directories and third-party websites, and cleaned up literally hundreds of errors that we identified.
Furthermore, we identified competitors who were using “black hat” tactics to game the system and unfairly block legitimate business listings from appearing in the map pack. We pursued Google moderators until they shut down all listings that were in direct violation of their terms of service, thus restoring a level playing field for businesses that follow the rules.
Within a month, our client was unfiltered and dominating the Map Pack for over a dozen search terms, and his phone was blowing up with calls from new clients.